A switch which stripes data onto multiple fabrics and sends parity data to another fabric has been described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/333,450, incorporated by reference herein. See also U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/293,563 which describes a wide memory TDM switching system, incorporated by reference herein. The present invention describes the receiver algorithm used in a data communications system which allows for detection/recovery of data and close to hitless recovery of a single element in a switch.
The present invention allows a switch that utilizes striping to tolerate a single hardware failure without requiring a change-over time. Conventional redundancy systems require detection of bad data and reconfiguration of the switch to an alternate source of data. The time between the failure to the successful reconfiguration of the system results in lost data which impacts traffic going through the switch. The technique of the present invention will have only a small portion of the traffic affected. A switch which stripes data onto multiple fabrics and sends parity data to another fabric has been described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/333,450, incorporated by reference herein. See also U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/293,563 which describes a wide memory TDM switching system, incorporated by reference herein.